1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer implemented methods and systems for the determination of the sales-based compensation (e.g., commission) earned by sales agents within a corporate sales force.
2. Description of the Related Art
Corporations and other large entities often employ a large number of sales agents to sell their products and/or services. The compensation of these sales agents is often performance-based; that is, at least a portion of the sales agents"" compensation may be derived from the value and/or volume of the goods and/or services sold by the sales agent during a preceding time period. The sales agents"" compensation is often set out as a contractual agreement (the xe2x80x9ccompensation planxe2x80x9d) between the corporation and the sales agent. Such agreements typically are crafted to implement the corporate sales strategy, and are often subject to change as the competitive landscape evolves and/or as new products and services are offered for sale by the corporation. To maximize his or her compensation, therefore, it is essential that the sales agent fully understand the terms of the compensation plan. However, as such compensation plans are complex (often including promotions, discounts, quotas, incentives, etc.) the sales agent typically must expend a considerable amount of time to estimate his or her compensation. Traditionally, sales agents have been relegated to such inadequate means as scratchpads and custom spreadsheets to determine their compensation, based on previously closed deals and future sales opportunities that may or may not close within the time frame of interest. Sales agents, therefore, typically spend an inordinate amount of time estimating their compensation, time that should rather be expended in the field, selling the goods and/or services with which the sales agent is tasked with selling.
In addition, each time that the corporation changes the compensation plan in response to the introduction of a new product and/or service, or in response to changes in the competitive landscape, a new compensation plan must be drafted and disseminated to each sales agent within the corporate sales force. Each sales agent then must review the plan, sign it and implement the plan. In turn, each sales agent, to maximize their compensation, must modify their spreadsheets or other means of calculating their compensation to gain a realistic estimate of their future compensation under the new plan. Again, this process reduces the sales agents"" efficiency and corporate revenues, as well as the corporation""s ability to fluidly influence the behavior of the sales force in the face of changing conditions.
What are needed, therefore, are methods and systems to allow corporations and other large entities to provide their sales agents with real time estimates of their sales-based compensation. What are also needed are methods and systems to allow sales agents to remotely compute their compensation in real time, based upon the latest version of their compensation plan. Also needed are methods and systems that enable corporations to field a more nimble sales force; that is, one that responds quickly to changes in corporate sales strategies, and one that sells the right product to the right customer at the right time.
A computer-implemented method of computing a compensation for a sales agent within a corporate sales force, according to an embodiment of the present invention, includes the steps of creating a sales agent compensation plan, the compensation plan being tailored to provide an incentive for the sales agent to sell goods and/or services according to a corporate sales strategy; storing the compensation plan within a database; providing remote access to the database via a computer network; enabling the sales agent to remotely access the database and to input past sales into the database and to input, qualify, modify and store future sales opportunities into the database; applying the past sales and future sales opportunities to the stored compensation plan to calculate a compensation for the sales agent and reporting the calculated compensation to the sales agent over the network.
According to further embodiments, the computer network may include the Internet. The enabling step may include a step of allowing the sales agent to securely log onto an application adapted to carry out the functionality of at least the applying and providing steps. The enabling step may provide access to the database using an HTML and/or dHTML-enabled browser, for example. The calculated compensation may be determined for a specified time period. The creating step may include a step of including one or more sales quotas for the sales agent in the compensation plan, and the reported compensation may include an indication of an achievement level of the sales quota(s) by the sales agent. A quota for each of the goods and/or services for which the sales agent is tasked with selling may be established and the level of achievement thereof may be reported in the compensation report. The achievement level of the sales quota(s) may be represented as a graph, text and/or table. The calculated compensation reported to the sales agent may be broken down into a plurality of compensation categories. The reported compensation in each of the compensation categories may be hyperlinked to a corresponding inputted sales opportunity. A step of inputting hypothetical sales opportunities may be carried out, wherein the reported calculated compensation reflects the sales agent""s past sales and the inputted hypothetical sales opportunities to enable the sales agent to forecast a compensation to be received if the inputted hypothetical sales opportunities close. The sales agent may qualify the sales opportunity by assigning a status to the sales opportunity. A step may be carried out to specify the status of the sales opportunities to be applied to the stored compensation plan to calculate and report the compensation for the sales agent. A step of modifying the created compensation plan to conform to an updated corporate sales strategy may also be carried out. A step of substituting the created compensation plan with a new compensation plan may also be carried out, the applying step then applying the past sales and future sales opportunities to the new compensation plan to calculate the compensation for the sales agent. The creating step may create a plurality of compensation plans and the applying step may apply the past sales and future sales opportunities to one or more of the plurality of compensation plans.
A computer-implemented method for providing an indication of a compensation for a sales agent within a corporate sales force, according to still another embodiment of the present invention, may include steps of retrieving past sales and future sales opportunities of an authenticated sales agent from a database; retrieving at least one compensation plan for the authenticated sales agent; applying the retrieved past sales and future sales opportunities to the retrieved compensation(s) plan to calculate a compensation of the sales agent and providing an indication of the calculated compensation to the authenticated sales agent remotely over a computer network.
The present invention may also be thought of as an electronic system for remotely providing sales agents within a sales force with an indication of their sales-based compensation over a computer network. According to this embodiment, the system may include a database configured to store one or more compensation plans, the sales agents"" past sales and future sales opportunities. One or more first computers may be arranged to receive login and authentication requests from the sales agents over the computer network, to retrieve an appropriate compensation plan or plans for each of the logged in and authenticated sales agents from the database and to retrieve each of the sales agents"" past sales and future sales opportunities from the database. The first computer(s) may also be configured to apply the retrieved past sales and future sales opportunities to the appropriate compensation plan(s) upon request to generate a compensation report for each of the sales agents and to send the generated compensation reports to the one or more second computers. The second computer(s) may be arranged to accept login and authentication requests from the sales agents and to send the requests to the first computer(s) over the computer network. The second computer(s) may also be arranged to input new future sales opportunities into the database, to modify future sale opportunities previously stored in the database, to request the compensation report from the at least one first computer and to display the compensation report received from the at least one first computer.